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A Chatbot Maker's Expert Tips to Create a Bot for Your Brand Chatbots, already capable of customer service work, can be integrated with ecommerce platforms to monetize your social media accounts and instant messaging profiles.

By Murray Newlands Edited by Dan Bova

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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There is a lot of hype surrounding chatbots, and they are quickly becoming a standard part of any digital marketing strategy. Chatbots are very versatile services, and when setup correctly, can help customers answer questions and fulfill an array of tasks. Chatbots may sound like an intimidating obstacle, but with the right preparation and guidance, they can become tools that help you monetize your social media pages. I've put together a guide to help you understand the benefits of chatbots, how they work, and how to build your own chatbot online for your brand to make you an expert.

Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding

What are chatbots and how do they affect your company?

Chatbots are services that mimic conversations with people in order to interact with your customers. Chatbots can be integrated with ecommerce platforms, allowing you to monetize your social media accounts and instant messaging profiles. All competitive companies must maintain a strong online presence, and chatbots are changing the way your audience interacts with you. They help you build an emotional bond with your customer, and because they are still new, building a chatbot now means a strategic advantage over the competition.

Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business

How chatbots work

There are two types of chatbots available: those that function based on rules and those that use artificial intelligence (AI). Chatbots that function based on rules are much more limited than those that work with AI because they only respond to specific commands; hence, they require a great deal of programming in order to be effective. Chatbots that are powered by artificial intelligence are more dynamic because they respond to language and don't require specific commands. They learn continuously from the conversations they have with people and can help complete a variety of functions without a monumental amount of programming.

Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips

The challenges of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular, but it still poses a challenge for marketers. Although you don't need to be an expert programmer to build a bot with AI, you have to make sure it offers working features and remains professional at all times.

Benefits of building a chatbot

Messaging application usage has surpassed that of social media, so chatbots offer a more practical way to reach your audience. They were created to provide a seamless experience, allowing customers to get answers through the applications they already use the most. In addition to the above, chatbots will help you:
  • Generate leads
  • Simplify your buyer's journey
  • Increase customer satisfaction through better customer experience
  • Distribute your content via messaging apps
  • Deliver targeted content based on user feedback and interests
  • Integrate AI in order to prove to be a more dynamic self-serving channel

Preparing to build your chatbot

Before building your chatbot, you will need to set the right expectations and goals. Instead of trying to create an "all-around" bot, try to focus on building a chatbot with a few features that work properly. Chattypeople.com offers the best chatbot-building platform available, allowing you to create chatbots powered by AI without any coding.

Related: Pretty Soon, Chatbots Will Be Able to Understand How You're Feeling

How to build your chatbot

I have learned from the free to use chatbot tool I create Chattypeople.com that best the best platform offer users freedom and flexibility. Tools must allow users to make bots without program coding knowledge, and make it easy to sign up using your Facebook account. Once you've set up a free account, you can start creating your chatbot. It has to be super simple to get started. Make sure you keep these tips in mind when building your bot:
  • Give it a unique name: Your chatbot should have a distinct name that helps it stand out. That way, consumers will only need to run a quick search in order to connect with your bot.
  • Give consumers hints on how to get started: The one thing about chatbots that is alien to consumers is the initial interface. Instead of having a website loaded with calls-to-action, users are now faced with a blank screen. Help them out by setting up automatic prompts, so your chatbot can proactively provide options to get your clients started.
  • Try to mimic a natural conversation flow: Your bot should try to mimic a natural conversation flow to streamline the process for consumers, making it easy for them to ask questions and get answers at any point during the interaction.
  • Make your bot sound smart with simple terminology: Your bot will be the new face of the company, so try to make it sound smart and eloquent by using short, concise sentences. Complicated grammar can hinder your reader and confuse your bot, so keep it simple.
  • Don't reveal all features at the same time: Chatbots can have an array of functions, however, revealing all of them at once can overwhelm consumers. Instead, create a conversation flow that helps your chatbot offer the right options at the right time.
  • Optimizing and maintaining your chatbot: Like most digital marketing channels, chatbots need to be monitored and optimized in order to increase performance.
  • ChatBot Marketing: How are you doing go get people to use it? Influencer marketing has proved to be very effective.
Properly building a chatbot will help you change the way consumers interact with your brand, increasing customer satisfaction and monetizing your social media platforms at the same time. By following the tips outlined above, you will be able to create a chatbot that aligns with your brand and that best portrays your company overall.
Murray Newlands

Entrepreneur, business advisor and online-marketing professional

Murray Newlands is an entrepreneur, investor, business advisor and speaker. He is the founder of ChattyPeople.com chatbot builder tool and Sighted.com. Read his blog MurrayNewlands.com.

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